Representing the American Landscape: The People's Parks

Representing the American Landscape: The People's Parks
March 17, 3:00 PM
A lecture by Charles Mitchell

FREE and Open to the Public - Sponsored by the NY Council for the Humanities

Drawing on visual images like paintings, illustrations and photography, promotional materials, explorers' accounts, the scholar's own explorations and other sources, this lecture explores the history of the park as landscape, retreat, resource, focusing on the Catskills and the Hudson Valley. Among the questions addressed:… Show more How did this place come to be "discovered," created, or identified? What were the forces behind this? How has the public been encouraged to visit or preserve the place; how has the experience of that visit been shaped? How has the landscape been used by Native Americans, settlers, early tourists, contemporary visitors? What are the management, ecological, and other issues that it currently faces?

Charles Mitchell has been on the faculty at Elmira College since 1993. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Lynbrook (on Long Island) he still occasionally refers to everything north of Yonkers as “upstate.” He teaches a wide variety of courses in American cultural history, with specific interests in environmental history, the history of ideas about nature, and the representation of the landscape in literature and art. This has allowed him to take a tax deduction for camping equipment.

Show less